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Media and Technology Stats and Studies – July 1, 2013

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a report showing that the number of cell phone-only households is rising. According to the report, in the second half of 2012, 38.2% of American homes had only wireless phones. This trend is reflected along demographic and socioeconomic lines as 54.3% of adults living in poverty are cell phone-only, compared to 33.2% of higher income adults. In addition, 50.5% of Hispanic adults lived in households with only wireless phones compared to 32.9% of non-Hispanic white and 39% of non-Hispanic black adults.

GfK Media & Entertainment released the results of a survey it conducted showing that 19.3% of U.S. households rely on over-the-air signals for TV – supplemented by over-the-top services like Netflix and hardware like Roku or Apple TV – instead of purchasing cable subscriptions. This percentage is up from 17.8% last year. The report found “49% of Latino households that prefer speaking Spanish home have a pay TV service — down from 67% in 2010.” Further, 41% of broadcast-only homes are made up of minorities, according to the report.

The University of California – San Diego released a report on “data gathered from 225,000 apps installed on 90,000 ordinary iPhones” showing some 48% of the apps studied accessed the unique identifiers of the phones they were installed on. Apps use these unique device IDs (UDIDs) to target advertising. In 2011, Apple advised iPhone and iPad app developers not to access UDIDs.

The Pew Research Center released a report on library usage among American 16-to-29-year-olds. The report found that 38% of young people use computers and the Internet at libraries, compared to 22% of adults 30 and older. Eighty-seven percent of survey respondents felt libraries should improve coordination with local schools.

According to AdAge, Nielsen released a report to its subscribers showing cable TV networks such as Spike and CMT broadcast more commercials per hour, on average, than their broadcast network competitors. Cable networks fill an average of 16 minutes, 59 seconds of each hour with so-called “clutter time” compared to 13 minutes, 32 seconds for broadcast networks.

Flight search site Routehappy released a report showing that 38% of domestic flights are Wi-Fi-enabled, with the Los Angeles-San Francisco route boasting the highest number of Wi-Fi enabled flights.